This article discusses the rise of the 'sharing economy', which is enabled by increased levels of global connectedness, and explains its attractiveness to venture capitalists. View Summary

This article discusses the rise of the 'sharing economy', which is enabled by increased levels of global connectedness, and explains its attractiveness to venture capitalists. RelayRides, a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace, is given as an example of the business opportunity the sharing economy represents. The sharing economy allows people to access products or services without having to own them, and therefore saving them money. At the same time, companies like RelayRides allow people who own the product to make money from it by renting it to others. For these types of businesses, reputation and trust are particularly important: a high level of transparency helps with this.

This case study describes a campaign from Art Series Hotels, an Australian boutique luxury hotel chain, which allowed customers to 'overstay'. View Summary

This case study describes a campaign from Art Series Hotels, an Australian boutique luxury hotel chain, which allowed customers to 'overstay'.

The hotel needed a way to increase leisure traveller bookings during recurring quieter summer periods.

Research revealed a major pain point of leisure travellers was the 11:00am checkout which was hitherto unchallenged across the market.

The 'Overstay Checkout', an innovative new checkout system based on hotel capacity, was born: guests would only have to check out when the next guest checked in.

The campaign involved a social media presence and the sharing of overstay stories.

The idea was recognsied globally as a genuine innovation in the hotel industry, and the campaign was tremendously successful, creating value for the consumer and solving the hotel's unsold inventory problem.

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Intercontinental Hotels Group: In-Hotel Credit Card Acquisition

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Effie Worldwide, Gold, North America Effies 2013

Priority Club Select Visa, the loyalty program credit card of Holiday Inn and the InterContinental Hotels Group, needed to boost the number of new US cardholders it acquired via the in-hotel channel. View Summary

Priority Club Select Visa, the loyalty program credit card of Holiday Inn and the InterContinental Hotels Group, needed to boost the number of new US cardholders it acquired via the in-hotel channel. Its existing approach, using leaflets at its front desks, was heavily under-performing. This led to a new channel focus to promote the card: the room. During check-in, guests' room keys were placed in a card jacket that promised 1,000 Priority Club Rewards points for watching a 90-second online video. With most card revenue coming from business travellers, the video showed the credit card as a portal device that seamlessly turned business travel scenes into holiday travel scenes, with an onward link to an application website.

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Art Series Hotels: The Overstay Checkout

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Adam Ferrier and Lach Hall, Warc Prize for Innovation, Winner, 2013

Art Series Hotels is a boutique hotel chain operating in Australia which, each summer, experiences a downturn in sales due to its normal clientele, business travellers, not travelling. View Summary

Art Series Hotels is a boutique hotel chain operating in Australia which, each summer, experiences a downturn in sales due to its normal clientele, business travellers, not travelling. It needed to increase bookings during these months and during similar periods of low occupancy by attracting a new market: leisure travellers. The agency found that the 11am checkout time (a global standard) was one of travellers' biggest grievances. The Overstay Checkout, a world-first checkout system based on hotel capacity, was born. In essence, guests would only have to check out when their room was needed for the next guest. This case study provides evidence of the success of the concept, which has beaten sales targets and generated an ROI of 359%.

The Art Series Hotels, an art themed hotel group in Melbourne, Australia, needed to ensure occupancy rates were up over summer. View Summary

The Art Series Hotels, an art themed hotel group in Melbourne, Australia, needed to ensure occupancy rates were up over summer. Its resulting campaign was inspired by the fact that Melbourne has a history of art heists and that thefts from hotels are quite common (e.g. bathrobes). So it hung two pictures by anti-establishment artist Banksy and challenged people to stay the night and try to steal the art; if they didn't get caught, they could keep it. The message was spread using PR and social media and resulted in 50% more beds than expected being sold, generating an ROI of 335:1.

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The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas: Just the right amount of wrong

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Jay Chiat Strategic Excellence Awards, Gold, 2011

This campaign revived the fortunes of a Las Vegas casino, The Cosmopolitan, against a tough economic backdrop. View Summary

This campaign revived the fortunes of a Las Vegas casino, The Cosmopolitan, against a tough economic backdrop. It aimed to appeal to a new, worldly, younger demographic - dubbed "the Curious Class" - who wanted "luxury mystique" without a "pretentious crowd". This positioned the casino between two Vegas stereotypes: the "old and gaudy" established brands, and rivals offering a debauched "Jersey Shore-style" weekend. The sophisticated creative was rolled out over both traditional and digital media and claimed that Vegas offered "just the right amount of wrong".

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HomeAway.com: The Return of the Griswolds

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Effie Worldwide, Gold, North America Effies 2011

As a new brand in category that is relatively unknown to Americans, competing against hotels that outspend HomeAway 30:1. View Summary

As a new brand in category that is relatively unknown to Americans, competing against hotels that outspend HomeAway 30:1. HomeAway needed a fresh idea to establish the notion of an alternative to hotels and put it on the proverbial map....quickly. So tapping into the equality of The Griswolds and their inherent connection to horrible vacation experiences was a natural fit for a brand trying to quickly establish itself in the crowded vacation space. And using social media, PR, the Super Bowl and especially, a short film to generate traffic was that fresh approach the brand needed.

After nearly 40 years of growth in Asia-Pacific, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts set itself ambitious targets for global expansion and increased revenue. View Summary

After nearly 40 years of growth in Asia-Pacific, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts set itself ambitious targets for global expansion and increased revenue. But in the middle of a severe recession, how could it meet a target of achieving more than USD 90m in incremental revenue? As part of its approach, it first calculated that this goal was equivalent to selling 10 more rooms per hotel a night. Instead of resorting to brand-devaluing promotions, it decided to build for the long-term. It focussed on communicating a stronger Shangri-La brand, as the very essence of Asian hospitality, differentiated from the competition in the luxury hotels sector, and equally engaging to its home audience in China/Asia and the rest of the world. It built this position from the inside out - setting the foundations with the staff before reaching out to the consumer. In less than a year, the communications campaign generated heightened employee and guest engagement and exceeded business objective more than four-fold.

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Holiday Inn Express: Showerhead

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Effie Worldwide, Gold, Effie Awards, 2006

People who stay at hotels like Holiday Inn Express don't care about chocolate mints on their pillow. But they do care about well executed fundamentals - a clean room, good breakfast, and a decent shower, the latter of which was increasingly hard to come by outside the upscale segment. View Summary

People who stay at hotels like Holiday Inn Express don't care about chocolate mints on their pillow. But they do care about well executed fundamentals - a clean room, good breakfast, and a decent shower, the latter of which was increasingly hard to come by outside the upscale segment. Holiday Inn Express introduced a program to upgrade guestroom bathrooms in all 1,400+ of its hotels. The signature item was a proprietary showerhead that guarantees a good shower. This is a case about leveraging rather than using product news to create increased brand preference, record-breaking occupancy rates and immediate return on capital investment.